Building the installed base and assortment of home theater products with DTS HD Master Audio will account for most of DTS’ activity at the January CES, Tom Dixon, director of strategic marketing for DTS’ consumer division, told us Wednesday. The breadth of DTS HD Master Audio products at CES, including the first home theater in-a-box systems, will be “pervasive,” Dixon said. The company expects CES to showcase prototypes of futuristic products, including the first DTS HD Master Audio portable devices, Dixon said. He wouldn’t elaborate. DTS sees itself as the “pied piper” of a movement to encourage more “attachment sales” of audio with the merchandising of flat-panel TVs, Dixon said. Nielsen data collected last December showed that 70 percent of HDTV set owners paired their displays with high-quality audio systems, he said. Though the proportion with HD audio may seem high, the results show that 30 percent are resigned to listening to movie sound through the tinny, stereo-only speakers built into their DTV sets, Dixon said. Consumers polled overwhelmingly rank high-quality video as the most important feature of the HDTV experience, but high-quality audio ranks a very close second, he said. Without DTS HD Master Audio, “you're robbing yourself of half the experience,” Dixon said of the message that the company is “seeding” at retail. DTS hopes to help retailers increase audio equipment attachment sales through point-of-sale tutorials installed at Best Buy and set to arrive in November at Circuit City, Dixon said. They're one-minute vignettes that trumpet the virtues of DTS HD Master Audio and upgrading to 7.1 surround systems from 5.1, he said. A clip he showed us touted DTS HD Master Audio as “bit-for-bit identical to the original studio master.” That capability figured prominently during focus groups in convincing DTS to give the technology its name, Dixon said. Though DTS HD Master Audio is a lossless codec, focus groups decisively rejected the idea of including “lossless” in the name, he said.
Paul Gluckman
Paul Gluckman, Executive Senior Editor, is a 30-year Warren Communications News veteran having joined the company in May 1989 to launch its Audio Week publication. In his long career, Paul has chronicled the rise and fall of physical entertainment media like the CD, DVD and Blu-ray and the advent of ATSC 3.0 broadcast technology from its rudimentary standardization roots to its anticipated 2020 commercial launch.
“Get the Picture” is the tagline that the IBM-led team running the DTV coupon program wants to use to promote it, IBM told the NTIA in an Aug. 1 contract proposal. Coupons will resemble plastic gift cards, and consumers will be able to start requesting them Dec. 25, a week earlier than the law requires, the proposal said. IBM and its partners will be ready to mail coupons beginning Jan. 1, three months earlier than the NTIA request for proposals demanded, they said.
NTIA has certified LG’s DTV converter box coupon- eligible, LG said late Friday. LG is the second company to win NTIA certification. Korea-based Digital Stream Technology did so last month. LG will ramp up production to “assure retail availability in early 2008,” LG said. It has committed to making coupon-eligible boxes available in January when consumers begin requesting coupons.
Best Buy again stopped short Wednesday of committing to carrying coupon-eligible DTV converter boxes chainwide. But the company pledged $50,000 to the Washington nonprofit student community outreach group Family, Career and Community Leaders of America to promote the NTIA coupon program nationally. Under sharp questioning during a House hearing in March, Best Buy similarly avoided making a chainwide commitment on converter boxes.
Procuring the parts needed to make a DTV converter box takes four months and shipping the boxes to the U.S. three weeks, Thomson Vice President Dave Arland told us. That’s also what Thomson told FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein and his staff in a meeting Monday, Arland said. He attended the meeting, according to an ex parte filing at the commission. The meeting was a part of Thomson’s efforts to educate FCC and Hill staff about the rigors of bringing coupon-eligible converter boxes to market, Arland told us. “There’s a concern” that if retailers wait until the end of the transition to order boxes, “that’s a problem,” he said. “Because it takes almost five months to bring a product from start to finish into a store, we cannot have a situation where all the converter boxes that are required are ordered next November. It’s just not going to work.” Thomson thinks the converter box “demand curve” will start very low in January and “it builds from there,” he said. “To the extent that we can even this curve out and have a steady dose of demand for the product, I think that’s a better thing for the industry. It’s better for retailers, and it’s certainly better for manufacturers.” At the Monday meeting, Thomson showed Adelstein a preproduction prototype of its RCA DTA800 converter box, the ex parte said. “I think he was reasonably impressed,” Arland said. At the NTIA’s DTV conference Tuesday (CED Sept 26 p1), Adelstein openly praised the DTA800 for its “relatively simple installation process,” its remote control’s large buttons and its “bilingual messaging” on the outside packaging. He repeated similar remarks Wednesday at the FCC’s DTV consumer education workshop (CED Sept 27 p1).
Funai plans to market two models of coupon-eligible DTV converter boxes under the Magnavox brand licensed from Philips, Consumer Electronics Daily has learned. One will have the CEA-909 smart antenna interface built in for a $5 price premium over the other box, which won’t have the feature, we're told. Funai is an important CE supplier to Wal-Mart, which is expected to carry the Magnavox boxes.
A relatively obscure Korean company is the first to be certified by NTIA to supply coupon-eligible DTV converter boxes. Original design maker Digital Stream Technology got NTIA approval to supply two box models, the D2A1D10 and the D2A1D20, the company said. NTIA confirmed the approval, saying Digital Stream Technology is the only company it has certified so far. Its models will list for about $70, the company said. Both have the same features, said Chris Lee, company vice president of business development. Neither has a smart antenna interface, a feature permitted but not required, under NTIA rules. Digital Stream Technology expects to ship boxes in early 2008, the company said. The company, a supplier of HDTV receiver components, has allied in the past with Daewoo and other Korean CE makers. Rivals we polled said they expect certification soon. LG will announce its NTIA certification “when it’s official,” said John Taylor, vice president of public affairs and communications. RCA Audio/Video is in the middle of the certification process for its DTA800 converter box, said Vice President Dave Arland. “We fully expect to be certified before retail availability in January,” he said. The company has a website, www.KeepMyTV.com, on the ins and outs of the DTA800, the DTV transition and how NTIA’s DTV coupon program works. RCA has contacted more than 100,000 consumers with information about the site, he said. Hundreds have signed up for updates, he said.
Mitsubishi “is evaluating various technologies to introduce 3-D into the home,” including Blu-ray players, videogame consoles and through broadcast video, Product Development Director David Naranjo said in response to our report that the company plans to market a 3-D Blu-ray player next year (CED Sept 12 p10). “We are not prepared to make any specific announcements about 3D Blu-Ray players or 3D enabled game consoles for 2008,” Naranjo said. “We are simply evaluating technologies to bring 3-D into the home with no specific mention of a device. Our 833-series Diamond DLP TVs are 3-D-Ready and future-proofed for the day when 3-D content is available for the home.” Mitsubishi hasn’t settled on the term “stereographics” for its 3-D products, Naranjo said. Several companies use stereographics “to avoid some of the negatives associated with the concept of 3-D,” he said. “Mitsubishi has not decided what terminology we would use going forward.”
Like trial attorneys making their final summations to a jury, cable and CE opponents rehashed familiar positions in reply comments in the FCC rulemaking on two-way plug-and-play devices. The rulemaking is designed to end the long cable-CE stalemate on two-way plug-and-play and promote the retail availability of devices in time for the 2008 holiday selling season.
“No forced layoffs” will come as Philips carries out its “Vision 2010” strategic plan, CEO Gerard Kleisterlee said Monday at an Amsterdam news briefing. Vision 2010 will combine Philips’ CE business and its domestic appliances and personal care products Jan. 1 into a single new “Consumer Lifestyle sector” under CEO Andrea Ragnetti, now CEO at digital appliances and personal care.